Have you thought to use Pinterest as an author?

English: Red Pinterest logo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I love Pinterest! I think it’s a beautiful medium and I simply love enjoying what other people have posted, liking, commenting and re-pinning onto my own boards. But it’s not just a fun place to hang out, it’s also a great tool for authors to connect with their readers. How, I hear you ask, since it’s all about pictures and writing is all about words? Well, if you think about it, writing is about painting pictures with words. Pictures and images often inspire us to write and why not combine the two?

Here are two ways I can see this working very well.

1. Create a board that shows what inspired you to write your book. Is it landscapes, places, foods, animals, people – wherever your inspiration came from, there must be images connected to that. Your fans will be interested and inspired at the same time.

2. Create a board with book covers of books that are in the same genre as your book. Make sure your book is prominently among them. If people find books they’ve already read and enjoyed in the same list as your book, they are likely to try out your book as well.

Make sure when you pin images you find on websites to link directly to those images on Pinterest, so you don’t breach copyrights. If you have the little PinIt add-on in your browser even better, it will make the process of only pinning images you can share on Pinterest easier and link to the correct content. When linking book covers, including your own, link to Amazon or another book seller. The book covers are meant to be marketing tools and people will be happy for you to share them.

I will post more ideas on how to use Pinterest as an author in the future, so watch this space. 🙂

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• Pinterest for Writers (socialmedia4writers.com)

20 Embarrassingly Bad Book Covers for Classic Novels

For today I thought I’d try the reblogging feature of WordPress. I found this really good list of really bad book covers and thought I’d share it on my blog. I guess it’s a way of showing how not to market your books.

Ever thought of wearing your book?

Wearing your book *giggle* – no I didn’t mean that literally, as in on your head or similar. 😉 What I was referring to was wearing a piece of clothing, such as a t-shirt with your book cover on it for everyone to see and admire … and hopefully start talking to you about. I’ve mentioned them before, I know, but Vistaprint do good value t-shirts as well as baseball caps and hoodies and a few other items of clothing that you can personalise with your book and some info on the best place to buy it.

Where would you wear this piece of art? Here are some ideas:

• at a race (running or cycling, for everyone to see) – if you’re entering as a team, then the whole team gets to wear the item, of course, including the dog!
• if you’re running a book stall
• at a game or match
• basically anywhere where there are lots of people to see you “wear your book”

The idea is a mixture of being your own walking billboard combined with getting people talking. People enjoy meeting authors, and should you happen to have one of your books on you (and I recommend you do at all times) then you might even be able to sell it there and then and the person can get it signed. Everyone wins. 🙂

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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Stop traffic with your book

You could let your car do some of your book marketing for you by getting a car door magnet with your book on it.It’s a bit like driving with your business card constantly on display.

Vistaprint do them at a very reasonable price and I’m sure a Google search will provide many other suitable suppliers. In the UK you can get one car door magnet (A4 size) for free if you’re happy with the designs they suggest or you can upload a picture and fully customise your magnet for £6.44 for one magnet. In the US I couldn’t find the free one, the price for a fully customisable magnet is $9.99 .

Not a lot of money in either case, considering this magnet will travel with you wherever you go, showing people your book cover in full colour and where you can buy it.

Keep the message simple, not a lot of text, just a web address ideally or the book shop you mainly want to send people to buy your book.

The magnet will be a talking point when you pick up friends or drop off kids at sports practice.

And if you’re not sure which side of the car the magnet to place on, simply get 2, one for each side. 🙂

PS: I’m not affiliated with Vistaprint, but they do have good offers that I thought I’d share here and I have used them in the past and would recommend them.